


White Magic

by epcot97



Series: Miraculous Ladybug One Shots [3]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Loss, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27948878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epcot97/pseuds/epcot97
Summary: Faced with the consequences of his akumatization, Chat Blanc seeks comfort in the memories of those he’d loved – and lost – as hope for redemption slowly fades.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: Miraculous Ladybug One Shots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2046785
Comments: 13
Kudos: 24





	White Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saiikavon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiikavon/gifts).



I have no idea how long I sat there, weeping.

Partly, it was due to the strange timelessness associated with akumatization; whenever Ladybug and I had fought Hawkmoth, we’d always found the victims of his evil butterflies generally had little to no memory of what had transpired while they were under his control. My experience _should_ have been no different, but the fact that I had suddenly become self-aware reminded me mine had not been an ordinary akumatization. The proof of that stood, rock solid, in front of me in the petrified forms of Ladybug and my father.

_My father. Hawkmoth._

What I couldn’t understand was why I still knew _who_ I was as I knelt there, tormented by memories of what I had done to the world around me. Looking to Hawkmoth’s stony presence held a partial answer, for the powerful grip of his control over me had snapped the moment my super Cataclysm had hit him; the effective destruction of the Moth Miraculous hadn’t released me completely, though, as my still-white costume seemed to support. That, and my inability to drop my transformation made it quite clear I was still Chat Blanc, and likely to remain that way until the end of my days.

Wiping the last of my tears away from my masked feline eyes, I stood and stepped closer to Ladybug, tangentially aware that water had begun to pool around my boots. Her arm was outstretched, reaching out that one last time to try and help me but now frozen forever in the moment I’d been forced to choose between two terrible options – and had opted for a third, far more tragic one instead. Knowing that it was Marinette beneath that mask made it even harder to accept what I had done; my heart – the same one Hawkmoth had turned so successfully against us – broke into a thousand small pieces as I gently caressed the hard stone of her pigtails.

“I’m sorry, Milady,” I said softly, choking back another round of sobs. “I’ve ruined everything.”

I didn’t expect an answer and was therefore unsurprised at her continued silence.

That first night I spent curled around the base of my Ladybug statue, oddly unaffected by the slowly rising water. Some part of me hoped I’d fall asleep and not wake again, but like some sort of strange vampire version of myself, I didn’t appear to need to rest. Or eat, for that matter; by the time the sun rose over what was left of Paris, I felt no different in any way than I had the day before. If, of course, it had only been a day. It might have been more.

By what I thought was the third sunrise, the water was ankle-high when I reluctantly decided my vigil at Ladybug’s side was more or less pointless. After kissing her stone-cold cheek, I sloshed away and leapt up into the air, extending my baton to rise ever higher into the smoke-filled air. My heightened feline senses told me the smoke was less dense than it had been earlier, though as I landed on a random rooftop and ran to the edge, I was uncertain as to it’s the specific source. Hopping onto a concrete half-wall, I perched and realized with some despair not much was left of the city once known as Paris; destruction radiated outward from where the now-fallen Eiffel Tower lay, my super Cataclysm having laid waste to nearly everything in its wake.

Looking closer, it was clear that while many buildings still stood, they were nothing more than hollowed-out shells, though here and there I could still find an untouched panel of glass or a sedate flowerbox full of colorful petunias gently swaying in the wind. The absolute silence was more gutting than anything, for it was clear that I had left nothing untouched in that final hopeless moment fighting off Hawkmoth’s final command. Tiny stone statues littered what open space remained, the remnants of the people I’d sworn to protect and whom I’d quite spectacularly failed.

I’d so desperately wanted to protect the woman I loved, I’d wound up sacrificing her _and_ the city.

The yellow orb of the sun finally rose high enough to partially break through the ribbons of smoke, giving the landscape an odd yellow-brown gauzy glow; the warm tendrils of its rays hit my white costume, but did nothing to warm the chill that had fallen over my soul. Feeling like I could _never_ be warm again, I closed my eyes for a long moment and ruminated on the self-created purgatory I’d plunged myself into, doubting highly there was any sort of redemption to be bestowed upon me. My masked eyes opened once more only to find I had been unsuccessful at waking from the nightmare.

Feeling the first unraveling of what was left of my sense of self, I leapt up into the air and landed on another rooftop, randomly picking one of the many patrol routes we would regularly cycle through. There was no question the Parisians were beyond my help, of course; it was simply the first thing I could think of that was a thread – however tenuous – to a life that had once been. As I ran, my traumatized brain began to substitute images of Paris during better times instead of the desolation I was soaring over, or in some cases, around. Gradually, I saw not scorched granite and dead streets but the grand buildings and pleasant hubbub of daily life much as it had always been. What was stranger – or perhaps, merely the final warnings that I was losing my grip on reality – was the notion that I _knew_ it was just an illusion, and one of my own creation. Nevertheless, by the time I landed on a very familiar conical chimney, I’d just about convinced myself it was just another ordinary summer day in Paris. Amazing scents were floating up from the bakery below me, and as I leapt to the wrought iron railing and perched, it wasn’t lost on me that my feline nose picked up notes for the very specific fresh pastries Marinette had always made for my semi-regular visits.

Perched there on the railing, her chaise looked as though she’d just left it a moment earlier, the book she’d been reading lying face down against the fabric. Shifting my feline gaze, I saw the skylight was open, mutely inviting me in. Chat had rarely visited Marinette’s room, but it was a space that Adrien was quite familiar with; more so after we’d finally become the couple she’d so fervently hoped we’d be. Sliding off my perch, I took a tentative step forward and then faltered; if only I had known sooner how she’d felt about me! Or, at the very least, had paid closer attention to the signs – and the similarities – between the Ladybug I’d loved from the first moment I’d seen her and my every bit as special classmate.

Taking another step, I wondered if I should have been honest with her up front once I’d discovered her secret. I’d thought I could handle it – that I could protect both her _and_ her secret – only to wind up outing my own to save her from akumatization. I felt my masked visage frown, for that moment, holding Marinette to my costumed chest as Chat, had to have been when Hawkmoth had gained the final piece to put his plan into motion. It had been monumentally unwise to dash out into the rain, transforming on the run, a fatal mistake that had ultimately cost me everything.

But _was_ it a mistake? 

The results seemed to speak for themselves, though if I were do it all again, I was reasonably sure I’d make the same choices once more. Hawkmoth had stacked the deck against me, no question; while I _had_ saved Marinette, I’d not been strong enough to save her _again_. It appeared I’d be living with that for the rest of my life.

Flipping through the skylight, I landed on the floor of Marinette’s bedroom. Everything was exactly where it had been that final afternoon the two of us had been doing our homework together; my books were off to one side, hers on the other, tablets still glowing on the assignment in question. Crawling over to the tableau, I smiled sadly to see the note I’d been making when that final akuma alert had rung out.

It took a moment for me to register the sounds coming from the sewing desk behind me, and I turned to see a familiar set of pigtails hunched over the pink-and-white device. I knew there was no way it could _actually_ be Marinette, but in that moment, I realized I was desperate to see her again. Slowly, I stalked toward her, all the while registering the little things my feline senses always said were uniquely her. The hair. The perfume. The way she tapped her foot on the pedal, just enough and no more than necessary. How her arms were at the strangest angle to the desk as she fed the fabric into the device.

I paused a half-meter from her, abruptly uncertain as to what to do.

“Hey kitty,” she said. “What took you so long?”

“I… I didn’t realize you were here,” I answered. As quiet as it had been in Paris, my voice sounded overly loud in my ears. “Have you been waiting long?”

“Not long,” she laughed as she continued with her work.

“Are you a ghost?” I heard myself ask.

I watched her shoulders shrug. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?” I asked as I stood and leaned against the edge of the table, crossing my arms.

Marinette turned her blue eyes on me and smiled; there was a trace of sadness in them. “I’m here because you _want_ me to be here. So, I suppose in a sense that does make me a ghost.”

“Of the person I loved?”

“And lost,” she nodded slowly as she reached an arm out to my costumed arm. “I’m still with you. I think you know that.”

Her touch felt as light as a feather, and I took her hand into a paw; it felt warm and very much alive, though I knew she was anything but. “This is my fault,” I said, repeating something close to what I had told the stony-faced version of my girlfriend. Pulling her out of her chair, I hugged her to me, and was delighted that I could even smell the slight scent of her shampoo. “I failed you just when you needed me the most.”

“You were in an impossible position,” Marinette replied softly as she reached up to place a hand against my masked face. “You knew the risks entailed in revealing ourselves. We both did. Hawkmoth played the one card he knew would get him what he wanted.”

I reached a claw tip to rustle the tie for her pigtail. “I broke your Golden Rule. And paid for it with your life.”

“It takes two to tango,” she reminded me as she pressed her head against my white-cladded chest. “ _We_ should have given up our Miraculous the moment you knew who I was. Or when I found out who Chat was.”

“I thought I could handle it.”

Holding her closely, I happened to look over her shoulder at the full-length mirror and caught sight of the strange figure sporting white hair, white feline ears and odd blue-black feline eyes; it took a long, long moment for it to register I was seeing myself despite knowing how my Chat costume had mutated under the effects of the akuma. Standing there with Marinette in my arms, I’d somehow expected to have seen my usual unrelieved black magical leather and gold bell; it was, after all, an illusion of normalcy I had created. That I’d purposely allowed myself to view what I had become was some sort of mental reminder that none of this was real, not even the version of Marinette that I had conjured up.

Sadly, I pulled back from her.

“You know,” she said softly, a knowing look in her eyes.

“Yes,” I replied, sadness and despair washing over me again. “I don’t want to leave you. To have this end.”

Marinette took a half step away from me, though she held my paws in each hand. “As long as you hold on to this memory, you’ll never leave me, Chat. Ever.”

“Stay,” I implored, knowing as I did so that the decision had already been made.

“It’s time,” she said quietly as her fingers brushed over my extended claws.

“Mari—” I started, but in a heartbeat, the world had reordered itself around me.

Instead of the bedroom as I had imagined it, I was actually standing atop the pile of rubble that may or may not have once been the bakery. What was left of a small green park just up the street told my feline brain what my heart was steadfastly refusing to believe; still, the flattened wrought iron fencing was hard to ignore, as were the smoking remains of what might have been a carousel or the crumbled foundations of a fountain. Not trusting my feline eyes to seek out the statue of the Heroes of Paris, I instead scurried over the rubble and ran full-tilt down what had once been the grand avenue fronting Dupont, somewhat surprised that the Seine seemed to have overtopped the canal.

As meaningless as time had become, the sun appeared to have dipped low on the horizon, cascading late-afternoon golden rays across the meter or so of water that was now just about everywhere. Splashing into a leap, I made for the rooftops once more, blindly trying to escape from memories I could not avoid any longer. It became incredibly difficult to cling to the last shard of what had once been Chat Noir while crossing over the bleak remains of my city; I lost track of time again only to snap to myself a final time perched on a sideways girder from the fallen Eiffel Tower.

Blinking into the setting sun made me realize I was facing the wrong way; confusion reigned until I glanced downward and saw Paris had become submerged beneath the waves of a much expanded ocean, a few chimneys or the occasional upper floors of a more modern high-rise barely visible. How much time had passed seemed less relevant than the very visual reminder I was about as alone as one could get. It was a devastating truth that shattered what was left of my sanity.

What happened next felt more like a fever induced hallucination, starring the worst parts of what I had become pitted against the virtues of a true hero. Fortunately for me, virtue won; like a lightbulb being snapped on in a dark room, I suddenly found myself standing in front of Ladybug atop the wrecked Eiffel Tower. Pieces of my once-golden bell were in her hands, and with a start, I held out my arms to see them once more clad in black. My feline eyes snapped back to Ladybug, who was saying something and holding a tiny polka-dotted eraser in her hands.

In flash of inspiration, I understood.

I knew she’d said something to me, and I made the mistake of calling her Marinette in response; that caused a frown on her beautiful, masked face, making me suspect this was _not_ the same Ladybug I had shared a life with. Confirmation came a moment later when a portal opened and the concerned face of a certain bunny-themed Miraculous holder from the future appeared, frantically imploring Ladybug to hurry.

The pounding from my heart was loud in my ears, so loud that I never caught what it was Ladybug said to me before she pushed herself up on tip-toes and kissed me, gently. No small part of me wanted to chase after her, to throw myself into the portal, time-travel-be-damned, but one lesson in the ramifications of only listening to my heart was all I needed. Instead, I stood sedately at the end of the girder and watched as she bolted into the light. Maybe a minute later, I watched as the burst of magical ladybugs poured back out through the portal, wrapping themselves around every square hectare; I closed my eyes and gave myself over to the white light that enveloped me, trusting in Ladybug luck to once more fix everything that had gone wrong, to restore both Paris and its citizens to normalcy.

When the light faded, I opened my eyes and found myself in the back seat of the sedan, the streets of Paris passing by sedately beyond the windows. Looking down, I could see I was strangely wearing the medal from the fencing competition I had won months ago, the day that… the day that I…

What day _was_ it?

Frowning, I couldn’t help but feel the strangest sense of déjà vu. 

Looking up at Gorilla’s face in the rearview mirror, though, I couldn’t immediately put my finger on _why_. Jumbled thoughts of what had transpired – images of me sheathed head-to-toe in white – were at first vibrant but faded as quickly as a soap bubble on a hot sidewalk, making me it feel as though I’d had an exceptionally vivid daydream. Some part of me knew better, but even _that_ faded in the space of a few heartbeats, leaving me solely with a singular thought that something important had happened, and that somehow, it would never happen again. _How_ I knew that was beyond the sudden headache throbbing behind my eyes.

I passed Nathalie at the door to the mansion and trudged up the steps to my room, once more disappointed that I couldn’t share my successes with Father; opening the door to my bedroom, though another wave of déjà vu hit when I spied Ladybug poised to leap out of my open window.

“Ladybug?”

“Oh—hey—Adrien Agreste!” she replied, seemingly caught off guard by my appearance. “I brought you a gift from... your fan club in Brazil!” she added, pointing with a gloved hand to a small, wrapped parcel on my bed. “There's a postal strike over there but they really wanted it to arrive today for Saint Athanasius Day.”

I frowned, for it felt like we’d had this conversation before. And yet, I was nearly certain this was the first time Ladybug had visited Adrien. “That… that’s my fifth name…” I replied, a bit distracted both by the wave of dizziness I was experiencing, and the fact that the girl I loved was in my room.

In. 

My. 

_Room_.

“Wow, they must be serious fans to know that about you! Well, happy Fifth Name's Day!”

And with that, she was gone.

I stood there, smiling stupidly for a few moments; Plagg appeared from beneath my shirt. For once, he was wearing a concerned look on his face. “Kid, are you okay?”

“I… I don’t know,” I smiled again. “But… I think maybe I am.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, floating in front of my face. “You look a bit dazed…?”

“Who wouldn’t,” I sighed. “Ladybug. Here. In the mansion. How amazing is that?”

Plagg smiled slightly, but not before I caught him rolling his eyes. “Oh yeah. You’re fine.”


End file.
